Foreign Perspectives

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We’ve just received yet another ludicrous bill from one of the French tax offices.

Apparently since we didn’t return the 2005 figures for the business until a few weeks ago and haven’t yet returned the 2006 figures (both thanks to our duff accountants), we must obviously have earned EUR 155,000 in 2006 and therefore they are taxing us on the basis of that. Since 2005 was our first full year with the business we were still investing substantial sums and therefore didn’t make any money at all in 2005 and it’s only in 2006 that things started heading towards a more normal level. Sadly, still a long way short of EUR 155,000 though.

As in all areas, they are incredibly optimistic about the performance of the French post office too and seem to believe that a letter which they printed on October 31st would be delivered within two days even though they didn’t even post it until the 6th of November!

Anyway, we’ll have yet another go at rattling the cage of our accountants to see if they can head off the attempt to collect on one of the largest direct debits I’ve seen (which’ll bounce anyway as the sum involved is actually more than our total income for the year!). Still, at least that should give me the opportunity to change back to paying them by cheque: it’s never a good move to pay any French tax place by direct debit as we’ve found.

James started in the local nursery school in September last year as the only non-French child.

When you look at any of the “moving to France” TV series, no matter what the age, the kids are put into the local school and are fluent in about three months. Over a year down the line, James uses single french words now and again but never a complete phrase. How come?

Ironically, I think it’s an aspect of them being helpful from the start in putting him in a class with the teacher who speaks a little english (they’ve even moved her up to the next class with him). The effect of that was that the children started speaking english which, of course, meant that he didn’t need to speak any french, so he didn’t.

Unfortunately, that’s going to mean that next year they will surely refuse him entry to the primary school and instead will insist that he goes to the CIPPA class in Perpignan. That’s simply not viable as you could hardly expect a six year old to negotiate two buses plus cross a very busy road by himself and besides it’s a class for 16 to 18 year olds who already speak french.

All this, of course, creates something of a problem for us as from September next year.

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Rental prices tend to lag the corresponding rises in house prices, essentially because rental contracts are generally 6 to 12 months in duration.

With the incredibly strong rise in house prices in Northern Ireland over the last year to 18 months it could only be expected that the rents being asked for would make a move after the customary time lag. Now, the house prices have levelled off at the moment but that’s not stopped the rents starting to shift upwards.

For example, in one estate which we have a vested interest in, a typical house was £130k in September 2006 vs £225k now. The increase in rents being asked is also heading upwards over that time from a typical £425 last year to £495 now. So far that’s only a 16% rental increase compared to the 73% price rise but I suspect that it’s merely a taster of things to come from the landlords as they test the water for reactions to that rise. Certainly if the prices of the houses resume their progress upwards I would be surprised if there wasn’t a certain amount of catching up happening this time next year with the rents.

If you think that British ATMs are complicated beasties, you should look at some of the Spanish ones.

For one thing, they’re easily twice the size of the UK ones. That’s not because they’re ancient but because they have seemingly millions of different functions. Whereas in the UK, a bank ATM has basically three slots (card, money and receipt) and a UK building society machine adds two extra slots to deal with deposits, the Spanish variety has all kinds of slots and it takes a few seconds even to find where you’ve to stick your card in.

These days ATMs are quite sophisticated and generally work out what language you speak from the card you’ve inserted rather than asking you which language you’d like. However, that’s frequently a step too far when it’s an expat wielding the card as you may well not be using a card from your own country when you’re on holiday or just travelling.

It’s certainly something that the French machines don’t allow for. The machines usually ask you what language you want but revert to French if you use a French card regardless of which language you select!